The paper reveals essence and contents of the life world notion in terms of sociology of life. Life world is analyzed as a combination of core meanings of life, taking into account the underlying fundamentals of human existence. Data of the national survey in 2014 and the all-Union research of public consciousness in the late 1980s permitted to explore trends in the development of the life world, its meanings, defining the major life goals that are of highest value to humans. Its main meanings are characterized especially in the activities of the contemporary Russians as economic, social, political and spiritually-cultural persons. On this basis the meanings of sustainable value orientations, ideological principles that people are guided by and which they exercise in their relationships with society and the state are analyzed. It is shown that in reality there are diverse life worlds, filled with different semantic content.